Caged Terror (Golden Apples of the Sun) (1973)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good concept, poorly executed.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Blistering performances.

Since the lowest option is a rating of 1, that's what it gets but it deserves far, far less. This movie is unadulterated crap. Zero plot, zero horror, zero acting. To put it simply, it sucked mule.The "cage" is a dilapidated, falling apart, outdoor, chicken wired cage and one person was tied loosely with twine as his girlfriend got busy with their abductors. The ending was non-existent as the movie should be. If you watch this movie trust me when I say you will be begging for that slice of your life back, currently I am flogging myself for the poor judgment in deciding to "check it out". Life is precious, too precious to throw away on this flick.One positive note, the location was nice. I plan scathing emails to the actors, directors and producers of this film for creating it. Shame on them.

Watching paint dry is more compelling and twice as engaging. An academy award should be given to anyone who can sit through this snooze fest with out yawning. If Seinfeld was a television sitcom about nothing, then this was the movie about nothing. Unlike Seinfeld however this film did not have great writing and acting to make it work. Within the first five minutes I had the feeling that I was watching a movie made by four people with nothing else to do one afternoon. There is no plot! The viewer is left to guess what the plot was so as to justify the time wasted in watching. The acting is bad; no it would have to improve to be bad. Elizabeth Suzuki gets naked but even that was ruined by poor filming. I would recommend this film be required viewing for film students. It would prove that no matter how bad your student projects suck, there is always something worse that went straight to video.

Without question one of the most embarrassing productions of the 1970s, CAGED TERROR reveals a curious determination to become something insightful or important as it reaches in futility for a leg of Bergman's monogram earthy key elements. The tragic result is such a wispy, self-aggrandizing display of thin air that it nearly succeeds as a Bergman lampoon. To its credit, however, it does have a nice look to it, being artfully lensed in scenic woodsy environs. Too, it's as relaxing as two glasses of wine and a Quaalude.The story(?) denotes a city couple in an early stage of budding romance enjoying a day in the wilderness. They walk along a shady path, apparently desperate to outdo each other in a bizarre duel of random verbal evasions. It's quite something, really...these characters hurl bits of insanely over-the-top, lofty discourse which sound like the idle chatter of a U.C. Berkeley coffee klatsch...you'll be howling over tarradiddle such as "I feel that life itself is made up of as many tiny compartments as this pomegranate....but is it as beautiful?". After what seems like an eternity of this grandiose sermonizing and a noticeable lacking of occurrences, we are presented a VERY anticlimactic confrontation involving a pair of folk-singing 'Nam vets. Aside from some obligatory nudity, nothing eventful or interesting happens IN THIS ENTIRE FILM, and its enfeebled crusade to draw the viewer "into a brown study" is strained and insincere. I thought the Larry Buchanan picture STRAWBERRIES NEED RAIN was a weak example of a Bergman homage...CAGED TERROR is somehow worse than that film, largely due to the ceaseless flatulent verbiage.1.5/10...one of the worst films I've seen in my entire pomegranate.

I used to review videos for Joe Bob Briggs' legendary "We Are The Weird" newsletter. I saw a lot of stinkers, but this by far was the worst, and the years have not been kind - it remains the most indecent crime against cinema I have ever witnessed. Don't get me wrong - CAGED TERROR is nominally more technically competent than, say, MONSTER-A-GO-GO or THE GUY FROM HARLEM or something of that ilk. What solidifies its claim as Worst Movie Of All Time for me is its unique blend of bare proficiency with crippling pretension. Is it a Vietnam commentary? An ecological protest? An incitement to race riot? A study of man's inhumanity to man? A novel exercise in padding nature footage out to (nearly) feature length? In short: a hep young urban professional (possibly the most loathesome screen character ever) somehow seduces a nubile Asian-American associate into camping in the woods with him. After brow-beating her with quasi-philosophical clap for the better part of an hour, they run across two wandering veterans, the unforgettable Jarvis (a righteous brother) and the Troubadour (guitar-toting Manson Family reject). Hey, a plot twist! Tension! Action! Suspense! Well, no, just a climactic getting-locked-in-a-makeshift-wire-chicken-coop-and-lightly-belittled scene. The victim in question stares listlessly at the captors and mutters, "No... no... please... don't..." Meanwhile, Jarvis addresses the Troubadour as "Trouby" once every two minutes, bringing to mind nothing so much as the alien star of Juan Picquer's POD PEOPLE. That's about all that happens in CAGED TERROR, and such a synopsis perhaps makes it seem almost tolerable. But trust me, I've seen thousands of movies in my life, and this one has remained, for the past eight years since I first saw it, the absolute worst. (I pop it in the old VCR once every two years or so just to reassure myself, and reassure myself I certainly do.) I think the element which makes CAGED TERROR so particularly hateful is this: very little happens, and although what little does happen happens quite poorly and quite slowly, what truly makes it compulsively unwatchable is the suffocating sense that the filmmakers REALLY, REALLY WANT to shove some kind of message down your throat. But because CAGED TERROR is so incompetent and ineffectual, what was intended as a civics lesson becomes a crash course in intense viewing discomfort. This film is 75 minutes long and feels like three and a half hours. It's terrible, truly truly terrible. Folks, trust me, I saw GHOSTS THAT STILL WALK and this one is worse. Go see it! You'll thank me. And curse me. Just for the record, my favorite line: (In CAGED TERROR but perhaps EVER) "Yeah, well, you probably think the Song of Solomon was an allegory for Christ's love for the church...!" (NOTE: Must be delivered in a tone of concerted condecension.)